Gents Mag 1851 part 2 p.115
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Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 2 p.115
nothing more imaginative and awful than the passage Arcades ipsum Credunt se vidisse Jovem," &c. "In describing the weight of sorrow and fear on Dido's mind, Virgil shews great knowledge of human nature, especially in that exquisite touch of feeling, Hoc visum nulli, non ipsi effata sorori." "The ministry of confession is provided to satisfy the natural desire for some relief from the load of grief. Here, as in so many other respects, the Church of Rome adapts herself with consummate skill to our nature, and is strong by our weakness." "I cannot account for Shakspeare's low estimate of his own writings, except from the sublimity, the super-humanity, of his genius. They were infinitely below his conception of what they might have been and ought to have been." "The mind often does not think when it thinks that it is thinking. If we were to give our whole soul to anything, as the bee does to the flower, I conceive there would be little difficulty in any intellectual enjoyment. Hence there is no excuse for obscurity in writing." "One of the noblest things in Milton is the description of that sweet quiet morning in the 'Paradise Regained,' after that terrible night of howling wind and storm. The contrast is divine." "The works of the old English dramatists are the gardens of our language." "The influence of Locke's Essay was not due to its own merits, which are considerable; but to external circumstances. It came forth at a happy opportunity, and coincided with the prevalent opinions of the time. The Jesuit doctrines concerning the Papal power in deposing kings, and absolving subjects from their allegiance , had driven some Protestant theologians to take refuge in the theory of the divine right of kings. This theory was unpalatable to the world at large, and others invented the more popular doctrine of a social contract in its place; a doctrine which history refutes. But Locke did what he could to accomodate this principle to his own system." "The Tragedy of Othello, Plato's records of the last scenes of the career of Socrates, and Isaac Walton's Life of George Herbert, are the most pathetic of human compositions."The biographical details of these volumes are so few in number and so little varied in character that we have not attempted to abridge them, and in the foregoing remarks have nearly confined ourselves to the consideration of the memoir as a commentary on the words of Wordsworth. A few changes of abode, frequent wanderings in Great Britain, occasional tours on the continent, a ceaseless round of study in the open air, and reading the best books at home, family duties and pleasures, the cultivation and improvement of his plot of ground at Rydal Mount, and the society of wise and good men, compose the simple yet noble annals of the self-sustained and art-devoted poet. His honours accumulated with increase of age; and it was no ordinary addition to the claims of the late Sir Robert Peel to his country's gratitude that he was mainly instrumental in procuring for Southey his second and larger pension, and for Wordsworth the laureate wreath as the visible crown and consummation of the "unfading bays" he had already earned for himself. Dr. Wordsworth's memoirs of his relative are sufficient for immediate purposes; with some defects, which we have freely exposed, they present us with a faithful outline of their original. But the lives of both Southey and Wordsworth remain to be written, and, perhaps,cannot be written satisfactorily until a generation or two have passed away. We will conclude our account of the volumes before us with Wordsworth's touching reflections, in a letter to an American correspondent, upon his own survivorship among the poets of his generation. "My absence from home was not of more than three weeks. I took the journey to London solely to pay my respects to the Queen upon my appointment to the laureateship upon the decease of my friend Mr. Southey. The weather was very cold, and I caught an inflammation in one of my eyes, which rendered my stay in the south very uncomfortable. I nevertheless did, in respect to the object of my journey, all that was required. The reception given me by the Queen at her ball was most gracious. Mrs. Everett, the wife of your minister, among many others, was a witness to it, without knowing who I was. It moved her to the shedding of tears. This effect was on part produced, I suppose, by American habits of feeling, as pertaining to a republican government. To see a gray-haired man of seventy-five years kneeling down in a large assembly to kiss the hand of a young woman is a |
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